Paris museum calls on Alberta to boost its dinosaur exhibit

One of the world's oldest and most distinguished natural history museums is relying on one of the youngest as it opens a unique exhibit today to promote the United Nations' Year of Biodiversity.

In the Shadow of the Dinosaurs is the $1.5-million showcase at France's National Museum of Natural History, founded during the French Revolution in 1793.

The fabled Paris institution has enlisted the help of China's Museum of Natural History and the quarter-century-old Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller to educate an estimated 450,000 visitors over the next 10 months about the devastating impact of several biodiversity crises during the Earth's 4.5 billion years of existence.

France is relying primarily on loans from the Chinese and Canadian museums, located near some of the world's richest collection of unearthed dinosaur skeletons, said Johanne Landry, a senior museum official here and a Canadian who previously headed the Montreal Insectarium.